using tumblr age 14: i am going to end misogyny reblogging pastel art about choice feminism

using tumblr age 23: [in the tags of a poll] SPINACH SWEEP🔥🔥🍃💪🏼💯

If I can recommend you do 1 low-effort thing for the love of God it is this:

Keep 5 cards in your pocket. One will say "yes", the second will say "no."

If you lose your voice, or lose speech, or want to make a dramatic embellishment at the right time, it is an elegant and efficient solution that is right there at hand.

But what if people question you from there? "Why do you have that card? Why would you do this? How long have you had that in your pocket?" For this, or whatever else they say, the third card: "I don't have a card for that."

"What the fuck," they ask. They laugh. They are bemused. You bring the energy back down with the fourth card: "I have laryngitis. I've lost speech. My throat hurts". Whatever you expect to occur.

The joke is over. Rule of threes. Now they are curious. YThey wonder about logistics. "How did you know I would say that? Is everyone so predictable?"

As a three-part bit, nobody ever sees the fifth card coming.

"I have powerful wizard magics."

Gets them every time

On it boss!!

[id: a set of 5 UNO cards upon which has been written, "Yes", "no", "I don't have a card for that", "can't talk right now 😢", and "I have powerful wizard magics 🙂". End id]

gritty both capturing the zeitgeist as usual AND educating me on the availability of free flow butter at american cinemas

golden eagle having a relaxing time

This is the world’s largest flying Engine of Murder marveling at the fact that it can actually have its tummy rubbed.

I feel like this is the next step up on “loose your fingers” roulette from petting a kittie’s tummy, but just below belly rubs for say a lion.

Can someone who knows birds better than I do tell me whether this eagle is as happy as it looks?  Because I want it to be happy.  It looks so happy.  Bewildered by having a friend, but so happy.

Just popping on this thread to confirm: yes, the eagle is happy about the belly rubs. Golden eagles make this sound when receiving allopreening and similar affectionate and soothing treatment from their parents and mates. It’s the “I am safe and well fed, and somebody familiar is taking good care of me” sound. Angry raptors and wounded raptors make some pretty dramatic hisses and shrieks; frightened raptors go dead silent and try to hide if they can, or fluff up big and get loud and in-your-face if hiding isn’t an option. They can easily sever a finger or break the bones of a human hand or wrist, and even with a very thick leather falconer’s gauntlet, I’ve known falconers to leave a mews (hawk house) with graphic punctures THROUGH the gauntlet into the meat of their hands and arms, just from buteos and kestrels way smaller than this eagle. A pissed off hawk will make damn sure you don’t try twice whatever you pulled that pissed her off, even if she’s been human-imprinted.

If you’re ever unsure about an animal’s level of okayness with something that’s happening, there are three spot-check questions you can ask, to common-sense your way through it:

1. Is the animal capable of defending itself or making a threatening or fearful display, or otherwise giving protest, and if so, is it using this ability? (e.g. dog snarling or biting, swan hissing, horse kicking or biting)  2. Does the animal experience an incentive-based relationship with the human? (i.e. does the animal have a reason, in the animal’s frame of reference, for being near this human? e.g. dog sharing companionship / food / shelter, hawk receiving good quality abundant food and shelter and medical care from a falconer)

3. Is the animal a domesticated species, with at least a full century of consistent species cohabitation with humans? (Domesticated animals frequently are conditioned from birth or by selective breeding to be unbothered by human actions that upset their feral nearest relatives.)

In this situation, YES the eagle can self-defend, YES the eagle has incentive to cooperate with and trust the human handler, and NO the eagle is not a domesticated species, meaning we can expect a high level of reactivity to distress, compared to domestic animals: if the eagle was distressed, it would be pretty visible and apparent to the viewer. These aren’t a universally applicable metric, but they’re a good start for mammal and bird interactions.

Pair that with the knowledge that eagles reserve those chirps for calm environments, and you can be pretty secure and comfy in the knowledge that the big honkin’ birb is happy and cozy.

Also, to anybody wondering, falconers are almost single-handedly responsible for the recovery from near-extinction of several raptor species, including and especially peregrine falcons. Most hawks only live with the falconer for a year, and most of that year is spent getting the bird in ideal condition for survival and success as a wild breeding adult. Falconers are extensively trained and dedicated wildlife conservationists, pretty much by definition, especially in the continental USA, and they make up an unspeakably important part of the overall conservation of predatory bird species. Predatory birds are an important part of every ecosystem they inhabit. Just like apiarists and their bees, the relationship between falconer and hawk is one of great benefit to the animal and the ecosystem, in exchange for a huge amount of time, effort, expense, and education on the part of the human, for very little personal benefit to that one human. It’s definitely not exploitation of the bird, and most hawks working with falconers are hawks who absolutely would not have reached adulthood without human help: the sick, the injured, and the “runts” of the nest who don’t receive adequate resources from their own parents. These are, by and large, wonderful people who are in love with the natural world and putting a lifetime of knowledge and sheer exhausting work into conserving it and its winged wonders.

reblogged for excellent info, I’m so glad that big gorgeous birb really is as happy as it looks!

Today’s bit of positive activism: A reminder that, although the world may contain many bad and awful things, it also contains an enormous winged predator clucking happily as a human gives it a belly rub.

when someone says "why would you want a physical copy of that? you can just stream it" i physically recoil. a feeling of dread comes over me like an evil spirit just passed through my body

Yeah, thats probably where they should be

There was an early attempt to introduce clowns to medieval Europe, but this proved to be a feudal jester.

To explain my chicken obsession:

* * *

Me: I’m enjoying drawing chickens for this commission.

Husband: ha ha Greek Myth Chickens!

Me: 🤔

I now present to you,

🏺Greek Myth Chickens 🐓

ILIAD EDITION

(drawn and originally posted in May 2021, coloured and reposted Jan 2023)

1) Egg-chilles and Patro-cluck (Achilles and Patroclus)

2) Mene-lay-us and Al-eggs-andros (Paris) (Menelaus and Alexandros [Paris])

3) Egg-amemnon (Agamemnon)

4) Aph-roost-ite and Helen of Spur-ta (Aphrodite and Helen of Sparta)

5) Nest-or (Nestor)

6) Androma-beak, Peck-tor, and Astyan-egg (Andromache, Hektor and Astyanax)

7) At-hen-a and Egg-dysseus (Athena and Odysseus)

8) Preen-am and Peck-uba (Priam and Hekuba [Hekabe])

9) Brood-seis (Briseis)

10) Diom-egg-es (Diomedes)

(See next post for last 3 - https://www.tumblr.com/greekmythcomix/722218945873051648/iliad-chickens-continued-11-lay-jax-tel-capon )

This is such a terrible pun, I almost didn't share it here. Too corny.

Stop using VERY

So a grammar thing that gets me every time because it's inflexible but no one normally teaches it as a rule, at least to people learning English as a first language, is:

The subordinate clause thing where, when you go 'who' or 'which' or whatever, it's got to be placed directly after the thing you're talking about, because that word-order relationship is how our not-very-inflected language tags what a modifier applies to. That's a structural element, it's not an arbitrary rule.

So it's like. If you get this wrong, it's not a breach of fussy grammatical etiquette like slang, or ending on a preposition or whatever. And you're saying a perfectly grammatical sentence. A valid one!

It's just that information you're saying is wrong, and sometimes nonsensical.

If I say, "It was in my sister's hands, who knew everything about the project," I am imputing this knowledge to her hands, which are defined as entities capable of knowing abstract information.

Which I might potentially want to say! It's very poetic! Unlikely to be literally true, but a sentence it's valid to want to construct, and which I have no desire to break down my ability to comprehend in favor of automatically mentally editing statements to be logical.

However, if I'm not trying to be poetic about muscle memory or whatever, I'll want to say that "it was in the hands of my sister, who knew everything about the project."

Because breaking there makes the clause subordinate to my sister, not her hands.

You can otoh get away with saying "my sister's, who knew everything about the project, hands" it's just awkward as fuck. Inelegant. Hard to decode. A trip zone. But not saying a different thing than it's supposed to.

I’ve read a bunch of posts recently where the human character is referred to as Human “so and so” and I find this a fascinating concept. What were the events that lead to the majority of species in space calling human individuals this?

Is it considered normal for extraterrestrial beings to refer to species different from themselves by a type of taxonomic naming system? If so is it because the majority of species in space have been known to each other for long enough to have a sort of shared acceptable history and culture in which grammatical titles are the norm or is it simply a shared trait within most intelligent species in space, one which humans do not share?

Was it a miscommunication during first contact between Humankind and the powers that be wherein the term “human” was translated as some sort of political position or title referring to the type of work a person completed (i.e. explorer, doctor, mechanic etc.) and by the time the mistake was discovered was too firmly embedded in the polite lexicon of inter species communication to be replaced or removed?

Or do aliens even know what “human” refers to? Have they been able to translate the word or is the language so completely different from the common structure of most languages found within space that they are able to have only the roughest translations available to them? Maybe the syntax isn’t the problem but the very sounds which the language is made up of making learning English or French or whatever the “common human language” happens to be nearly anatomically impossible for most species to replicate. Maybe it is not a singular language that has led to the confusion in translation efforts but the fact that such a small planet in such a backwater galaxy is home to 6,600 languages, a trait that may completely confound life forms coming from backgrounds where each species may only have one or two languages.

I don’t know but the possibilities are limitless!

phrases

⇾ another think coming (not another thing coming)

⇾ bated breath (not baited breath)

⇾ beck and call (not beckon call)

⇾ buck naked (not butt naked)

⇾ by accident (not on accident)

⇾ by and large (not by in large)

⇾ case in point (not case and point)

⇾ change tack (not change tact)

⇾ couldn’t care less (not could care less)

⇾ deep-seated (not deep-seeded)

⇾ due diligence (not do diligence)

⇾ exact revenge (not extract revenge)

⇾ for all intents and purposes (not for all intensive purposes)

⇾ free rein (not free reign)

⇾ homing in (not honing in)

⇾ hunger pangs (not hunger pains)

⇾ jibe with (not jive with)

⇾ moot point (not mute point)

⇾ nerve-wracking (not nerve-wrecking)

⇾ nip it in the bud (not nip it in the butt)

⇾ on tenterhooks (not on tender hooks)

⇾ one and the same (not one in the same)

⇾ palm off (not pawn off)

⇾ per se (not per say)

⇾ piqued my interest (not peaked my interest)

⇾ pore over (not pour over)

⇾ scot free (not scotch free or scott free)

⇾ shoo-in (not shoe-in)

⇾ sleight of hand (not slight of hand)

⇾ spit and image (not spitting image)

⇾ whet your appetite (not wet your appetite)

words

⇾ accept: receive something (verb) // except: exclusion (preposition)

⇾ adverse: something harmful // averse: feeling of dislike

⇾ advice: guidance (noun) // advise: to give counsel (verb)

⇾ affect: to influence (verb) // effect: result (noun)

⇾ all together: same place, same time // altogether: whole or complete

⇾ allowed: permitted // aloud: audibly

⇾ allude: make indirect reference // elude: escape

⇾ amiable: referring to person // amicable: referring to interaction

⇾ among: expresses relationship between several items // between: expresses relationship of one thing to another or to many other things

⇾ amoral: lacking morality // immoral: not conforming to standard morality // nonmoral: morality is irrelevant

⇾ any time: noun phrase used after preposition // anytime: adverb

⇾ assure: to tell someone something with confidence // ensure: to make certain something will occur // insure: to protect

⇾ a while: noun // awhile: adverb

⇾ bate: angry mood // bait: lure

⇾ blond: masculine // blonde: feminine

⇾ breath: air inhaled and exhaled (noun) // breathe: the action of inhaling and exhaling (verb)

⇾ canvas: closely woven close used to make items // canvass: to look closely or to elicit votes

⇾ capital: city, wealth, or resource // capitol: building where lawmakers meet

⇾ carat: a measure of the purity of gold // caret: a mark placed below the line to indicate a proposed insertion in a text // carrot: a vegetable

⇾ complement: enhances something // compliment: expression of praise

⇾ conscience: noun; one’s awareness // conscious: adjective; awake or alert

⇾ continual: occurring at regular intervals // continuous: occurring without interruption

⇾ desert: dry terrain // dessert: sweet course

⇾ dichotomy: entirely opposite // discrepancy: relatively minor inconsistency // disparity: significant difference

⇾ disc: music or throwable object // disk: computer storage

⇾ discreet: unobtrusive // discrete: separate

⇾ disinterested: impartial // uninterested: bored or not wanting to be involved

⇾ each: refers to individual object or person in a group of two or more // every: refers to a group of objects or people in a group of three or more

⇾ e.g.: for example (exampli gratia) // i.e.: in other words (id est)

⇾ emigrate: to move away // immigrate: to move into

⇾ empathy: ability to understand another’s perspective or emotions (but do not necessarily share them) // sympathy: understand from one’s own perspective (and share feelings)

⇾ envy: feeling of desiring something one does not have // jealous: feeling of fearing losing something one does have

⇾ every day: adverb // everyday: adjective

⇾ farther: physical distance // further: metaphorical distance

⇾ fazed: disturbed // phased: staged

⇾ fewer: countable difference // less: metaphorical difference

⇾ flaunt: to show off // flout: to defy

⇾ hanged: death of person via hanging // hung: to have suspended something

⇾ historic: famous or influential // historical: related to history

⇾ ingenious: to be clever and creative // ingenuous: to be innocent and unsuspecting

⇾ its: possessive form // it’s: it is

⇾ lay: placement of something // lie: act of reclining

⇾ loose: not fixed in place (adjective) // lose: to be deprived of or defeated (verb)

⇾ may: high possibility // might: low possibility

⇾ palate: roof of mouth // palette: thin board of colors // pallet: bed or platform

⇾ peak: mountain top // peek: quick look

⇾ persecute: to harass // prosecute: to bring legal action

⇾ prescribe: dictate a rule to follow // proscribe: forbid something

⇾ principal: head of organization or sum of money // principle: basic truth or law

⇾ reign: to rule // rein: to control or restraint

⇾ sleight: deceitful dexterity // slight: insult

⇾ stationary: unmoving // stationery: letter writing materials

⇾ subconscious: not in current focus awareness // unconscious: processes that occur automatically and are not available to introspection

⇾ than: for comparisons // then: for passage of time

⇾ that: restrictive; indicates something specific // which: nonrestrictive; adds information

⇾ their: possessive form // there: place // they’re: they are

⇾ to: preposition // too: adverb meaning also // two: number

⇾ well: adverb // good: adjective

⇾ who: subject // whom: object

⇾ who’s: who is // whose: possessive form

⇾ worse: comparative // worst: superlative

⇾ your: possessive form // you’re: you are

Basically, my rationale for always using plural verb agreement for “they” regardless of whether it’s being used in the singular or the plural is that “you” also always takes plural verb agreement regardless of whether it’s being used in the singular or the plural (i.e., always “you are”, never “you is”), and spurious consistency is a time-honoured tradition in English grammatical crackpottery.